When I was a girl we wore half-slips called we enaguas.  And since we were always trying to hike up our skirts higher than our parents intended us to wear them – our slips were always showing. 

           “Your slip is showing,” we warned each other all day long.

            Lately, the country’s insidious racism has also been showing.  It’s been slipping out left and right. Especially right. Beginning with South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint criticizing President Obama’s health care plan by saying, “We will break him.”   Break him?  What exactly does “breaking” Obama mean and what does it have to do with the health plan? People “break” horses, and I’ve read that it was an expression uttered by slave masters.  Hmmm.…was that a little racial slip of the tongue?

S’cuse me Senator, but I think your “slip” is showing.

Then there were the vitriolic town meetings against the health care plan. Not too many real details about the pros and cons of the plan were discussed at many of these events – but a lot of unfocused hatred was certainly expressed.

               S’cuse me, incoherent, inarticulate, general pubic, but I think your collective “slip” is showing. 

Then there was the stupid uproar from people who accused the President of wanting to brainwash students about socialism by telling them to stay in school.  (It occurs to me that it is especially important for children with parents who make such connections to stay in school!)  Was it really socialism people were afraid of? Or was it that old, can’t-keep-it-down, racism bubbling up.

                ‘Scuse me folks, but your collective “slip” is showing.

            But Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina caused the greatest  big fat “slip” of racism when he pointed to the president and yelled, “You lie!” during the president’s speech on health care. (Maureen Dowd columnist for the New York Times said, “…what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!”) Mr. Wilson is intent of believing that health care will be given to immigrants regardless of the facts that very clearly say otherwise.

His spontaneous snarl reminds me of the famous picture of hatred taken in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas of a school student snarling in the same frame of mind. Her target:  A fellow high school student in a crisp white skirt and blouse trying to integrate the high school.  When you look at this picture you wonder what this white student is so afraid of, and are aghast when you realize it is a black person. 

Racism is a mindless, incoherent hatred, and we are seeing many examples of it lately.  In the 1960’s we were quick to accuse each other of it — these days we have gone to the other extreme.   Call it what you will — socialism, communism, a rose.  When there is this much intense inarticulate rage (not a difference of opinion or a different set of ideas, much less a civil debate directed at a man who holds the most powerful position in the world — it’s racism.

And that makes me afraid.

Sonia Sotomayor and me, at a NY event.

She said that watching Perry Mason (television show that took place in a court room) inspired her to study law; and that noticing the judge was the most important person, inspired her to want to be a judge herself. I was also inspired by television. I watched Lucille Ball on I Love Lucy and was inspired to be an actress because Lucy got all the laughs. Being a comedic actress helped me get cast on Sesame Street.

But I don’t want to talk about myself. I want to talk about Sonia Sotomayor. She is described as being a Nuyorican. I remember how happy I was when I first heard that term in the seventies. What a relief to have one word that described Puerto Ricans born on the mainland. I always felt saying, “I’m Puerto Rican but I was born here; my parents were born in Puerto Rico, blah, blah, blah,” was a long and apologetic explanation of my existence.

Wait a minute. Am I talking about myself again? Sorry. Let’s talk about Sotomayor’s educational experience. Though she was at the very top of her class in high school she had to brush up her writing skills in college. I had a similar experience. I was a pretty good student in the South Bronx but when I got into the high school of Performing Arts I plummeted to the bottom of the class because of my inferior elementary education. High school wasn’t giving out A’s for showing up the way elementary school was and …

Wait a minute. I’m talking about myself again! Let me get back to the other Sonia. I’m happy that she’s put the Bronx front and center. I volunteer for the Bronx River Alliance, an organization dedicated to cleaning up the Bronx River in my old neighborhood. Since the river connects one of the wealthiest communities in America with one of the poorest, you can imagine the diversity of the people forced to work together. This terrific tension helps us come up with the best solutions. I like to call this capacity of diverse people solving problems as a group, “The Terrific Tension of Diversity.”

Wait a minute. I am talking about myself again! And I know why.

I see myself in her, as I am sure many people do – because Sotomayor is in touch with the lifestyle of a group of people not generally represented.  And I hope she brings all that insight and knowledge and experience into her deliberations. She has said that she never loses sight of what impact her decisions make on people, and the way they live their lives. That sensibility, coupled with her profound knowledge and respect for the law makes her a valuable resource for the American people.

Sonia Sotomayor will make the Supreme Court better and wiser; and if I may talk about myself for a moment, I am thrilled.

Last week, I was in Austin giving a speech to the Texas Association of School Boards.  The cabdriver who picked me up at the airport was friendly, blond, middle-aged and tattooed.  He was listening to the sweetest voiced fear-mongering broadcaster I ever heard on the radio.  Her youthful, innocent dulcet tones reminded me of the singer Emmylou Harris.

Among other things, this broadcaster was trying to convince listeners that bar codes on food was the government’s way of tracking people home, and that officials were equipping new cars with chips that could monitor and disable their cars at a moment’s notice.

All the while I tried to gauge the cabby’s opinion of all this baseless incendiary talk and couldn’t — until the sweet voiced announcer said that if we succumbed to any kind of gun control we would be pledging allegiance to the devil!  Then his vocal reaction let me know he was, indeed, buying this baloney.

I hope gun control does not become President Obama’s Achilles Heel, as slavery was Abraham Lincoln’s.  Lincoln was great and tragic because he touched and disturbed a nerve deep in the American psyche — the desire of one race to subjugate another. Today, the relationship between people and their guns runs just as deep and might be20just as volatile. 

Gun control is a raw nerve President Barack may have to pick at because of the Mexican drug cartel.  (The concern centers on the fact that most of the guns used by the Mexican drug gangs are sold to them by American gun dealers).

This desire to own gun runs deeper than even I imagined; and it’s not just the provincial and uneducated and sexually frustrated who want assault rifles – sophisticated dentists, doctors, and lawyers want them too.  (Of course, anybody can be sexually frustrated.  Actually, judging from television shows all of America is sexually frustrated.)

Any reasonable person would agree that the drug cartel would have a tough time existing without our guns and our insatiable desire for drugs. Yet some have said that the problem totally lies with those Mexican bandidos.

In any case something deep and profound is keeping people from making the distinction between hunting weapons, or a weapon intended to protect you and your family, or a weapon to help protect your property, or an assault rifle used to kill law enforcement officers and rival drug gangs – plus innocent bystanders.

I always thought when our forefathers insisted on an American’s right to bear arms they were thinking of the poor schmucks who lived out in the middle of no-where, surrounded by grizzly bears and depraved gunslingers.  Heck, were  I in that situation I’d want a couple of guns

handy too.   But I don’t think the forefathers were thinking of putting

Uzi’s and Bazookas in the hands of the general public.  I think they would’ve saved those weapons for the military.

So amigas, where is the line going to be drawn? What weapons should not be in the hands of the general public. Hand-grenades?  Mini-nuclear devices?

Whaddaya think?

Sonia Manzano

4/16/2009

I am beginning to hate watching news shows because…

  EVERYTHING THAT IS SAID HAS EQUAL IMPACT AND LISTENING TO IT IS LIKE READING AN ANGRY E-MAIL!  SO THAT’S HOW I WILL PROCEED WRITING THIS. I WANT YOU TO GET A SENSE OF HOW I FEEL WHILE LISTENING TO CABLE NEWSHOWS!

I FEEL THIS WAY ABOUT BOTH SHOWS THAT I AGREE WITH AND WHOSE SENSIBILITIES I SHARE, AND THE SHOWS WHOSE SENSIBILITY I ABHOR. THE NEWSCASTERS SHOUT EVERY FACT LIKE IT WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT SOUND BITE YOU WILL EVER HEAR IN YOUR LIFE! NOT ONLY THAT – WHAT THEY SHOUT AT ME IS NOT NECESARAY NEWS BUT SPECULATION AND bochinche OR A DISSERTATION OF HALF-BAKED IDEAS! PLUS — THEY HARDLY LET ANY OF THEIR GUESTS RESPOND TO THEIR ANNOUNCEMENTS.

It’s so adolescent.

MY DAUGHTER USED TO EXPRESS HERSELF IN THAT OVERBLOWN WAY WHEN SHE WAS TWELVE-YEARS-OLD. HER FAVORITE PROCLOMATION WAS “OH MY GOD” WHICH SHE WOULD SCREAM IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY WHETHER SHE WAS REACTING TO A FAVORITE SONG OR FALLING DOWN A FLIGHT OF STEPS.  I BEGGED HER TO STOP DOING THAT WHILE I WAS DRIVING AFTER HER EXCLAMATION DAMN NEAR MADE ME DRIVE INTO A TREE.

The thing about it is this –THE VIEWER FORGETS WHAT HAS BEEN YELLED AT THEM TWO MINUTES AFTER THEY HEAR IT BECAUSE THE VIEWER HAS NO SHORT-TERM MEMORY. Which brings me to President Obama’s press conference Tuesday, March 24, 2009.

A reporter asked him why he waited two or three days to react to the rage the AIG crises aroused. His answer was that likes to know what he’s talking about before he speaks.  TAKE THAT YOU NANO-SECOND THINKERS WHO SHARE YOUR EVERY BARELY FLESHED OUT IDEA AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS TO ANYONE WHO WOULD LISTEN.  OUR PRESIDENT THINKS BEFORE HE SPEAKS, AND HE’S PROUD OF IT.

A lesson some newscasters should learn, instead of salivating and jumping to juicy conclusions like children.

Sonia Manzano

This question flying around, as to whether or not Rush Limbaugh represented the GOP,  is the perfect topic to twitter about. (Twittering being the term used to define fleeting thoughts that run through your mind but must be shared in cyberspace anyway). But since I’m a secret Luddite, I can only twitter to myself while pedaling on the Life Cycle machine at the gym.

How are Elmo and Rush Limbaugh alike? I wondered as I put my feet in the pedals. Well … both have huge followings of people with similar mental capacities … both use their voices to incite … neither are elected officials … both  are members of The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

Hey, wait a minute! I never realized that Elmo, Limbaugh, and I were members of the same union!

Starting to work to work up a sweat, I wondered which AFTRA category Mr. Limbaugh checked off when he paid his AFTRA dues. Announcer?  Yes. 

Actor? Maybe. Newsperson? I don’t think so.  Specialty Act?  Quite possibly. Then there are the subcategories: comedian, stunt person, and “other.”  In any case, I couldn’t find politician, or elected official.

So how could people assume he represents the GOP? How could he? How come he wants to debate the President?  Wouldn’t it be more appropriate if he debated Howard Stern?

Finishing my torturous 20-minute warm-up, I lay down on a mat to do crunches and happily distracted myself by thinking that the Republican trick of  pulling out Michael Steele to represent the GOP was as unimaginative as the worst copycat television programming of the eighties.

If one network came up with a successful sit-com that featured overweight African-Americans  – the other networks were  quick to follow. And now that the Democrats have people of color in power, by golly, the GOP will do the same. Steele came out of his corner snorting like a prizefighter by threatening to take down the Democrats, instead of like a politician interested in leading. But, at first opportunity he folded by apologizing to Limbaugh’s bullying as if Limbaugh  were an elected official and not, as I said before, merely a card carrying AFTRA member!

Ay, ay, ay!  Why can’t people stick to their job descriptions? … And why can’t I have a flat stomach? … And why don’t the Republicans challenge their leaders to come up with new ideas, instead of recycling Ronald Reagan’s ideas of a tricking down economy in the 1980’s … which was the last time I had a flat stomach — and the last time there was a federal deficit almost as large as the one left behind by the Bush administration.

This trickling in a teacup … er … I mean … this twitter in a teacup … er … I mean … twitter in a squawkbox … no, no, no, what I mean is -- this Limbaugh as the leader of the GOP tempest in a teacup will pass when we become hungry for more news and I become hungry for a donut…which is going to be any minute.

After my crunches I caught sight of Michelle Obama on the gym’s television set.  The sound was off so, focusing on The First Lady’s arms, I meandered over to the Graviton.  “I wish I could have arms like that,” I twittered. 

Then — how would you say twitter in Spanish? … pensamientito … ocurririto … ideaita … estupedezita?

Sonia Manzano

I’m a busy woman.  I have a million things to do.  I have to help find an illustrator for my new children’s book, I’m shopping my memoir around, Sesame Street’s fortieth anniversary is coming up and there are events  connected with that I must  attend, my twenty-year old daughter is in love, and I can’t help wondering how she is going to handle that, plus — I have to lose five pounds in the next twenty minutes. I don’t have time to stop everything in order to blubber through HBO’s presentation of an inauguration celebration, broadcast from the Lincoln Memorial, Sunday afternoon.  

But there I was, crying into my diet coke while listening to James Taylor sing about love. Then there was the shot of the future first family, and Michelle Obama cupping daughter Sasha’s face with infinite tenderness the way mothers do that sent me grabbing for more tissues.  Queen Latifah reminding us Marion Anderson had defiantly sung, My Country Tis’Of Thee, on that very site decades before, and the unplanned shot of Denzel Washington, unaware and  looking onto the proceedings gave me two more opportunities to blow my nose. 

Amigas, we were represented by George Lopez, Shakira, and Rosario Dawson, and that was good but I wished there had been more Latinos — America Ferrera, Gloria Esteban, Jennifer Lopez,… hell — me! No matter, they were probably attending other events.   

Finally, Barack Obama spoke.  Easily, truthfully, and I was struck by this:  My God, he really believes what he is saying! He b elieves there is a light  at the end of the tunnel  strewn with three wars, a bad economy, a rotten health system bah, bah, blah…and he believes the American people have the wherewithal to get to the end ot that tunnel with him .

Beyonce, looking perfect and singing America  (The Beautiful) exquisitely closed the show; and I shuddered, praying that  Barack Obama doesn’t overestimate the American people, and that we actually can rise to the occasion.

The editors of CATALINA asked me to blog until the inauguration.  Frankly, I was thinking I was done.  I was politically delighted but depleted and looking to leisurely shaving my legs (as opposed to slashing at them with a Bic disposable), eating ice cream and mentally dressing Michelle Obama for the inauguration with what I would wear  

I had even stopped opening all the e-mails sent by the Obama camp. “Enough!  You’re in!  Go govern!” I reasoned. Then I received an invitation from a friend who was hosting an Obama party. More Obama parties?  Hmmm … what was going on here?  My curiosity led me to open those old e-mails. That’s when I discovered that, according to Obama’s people, it wasn’t over at all.  As a matter of fact – it had had just begun!

They are trying to maintain the groundswell of enthusiasm that got him elected and want to continue to canvass peoples’ opinions on everything!

Richard and I went to the party, and met a real job-lot of citizens.   (It was held in rural Pennsylvania). Our host had downloaded material from the Obama web-site, designed to help him navigate a meeting with strangers. We even listened to a pep talk from the campaign on a computer.  (Very 1984). 

It occurred to me that Obama and his people were now fighting their biggest enemy – apathy. 

We got to know each other and threw around some ideas about celebrating, by serving the community. And before people’s eyes glazed over with disinterest, Richard and I agreed to host the next party.

S.M.

One phrase that has always made me uncomfortable was “family values.” Now that the GOP is scrounging around for what they represent, I’m hearing the term “core values,” and getting that same uncomfortable feeling. Why? Because in either case I never know exactly whose values are being talked about, much less what they are.

Most everybody has values.  They’re just not all the same; and it’s very dangerous when we make assumptions about each other’s beliefs and morals. And it was America Ferrera, star of the movie Real Women Have Curves who inadvertently helped me understand this.  

As you may know, the movie was about young girl in a Mexican-American family in Los Angeles who gets a full scholarship to an Ivy League school in New York City, but her parents are reluctant to let her accept because it was too far away from home. They felt it was just as good for her to attend a small community college nearby, and so be able to help with the family’s small dress -making business.

The film was lovely, funny and nuanced, but I left thinking the scenario unbelievable. Being a Nuyorican whose mother always said “Go for it,” I couldn’t believe any mother would discourage her daughter from attending Columbia University for free.

Shortly after I saw the movie, I was asked to give a talk in a small Texas border town to students and parents.  My charge – encourage the young to accept internships and scholarships to universities and encourage their parents to let them go! I felt like a traitor, breaking up solid close-knit families and communities with newfangled American values, and ideas of success. 

Ironically, one can say that their strong family ties prevented them from succeeding in American society!

And there was nothing sadder than subsequently meeting middle-aged women who never went for their Ph.D’s because it would’ve been impossible for them to break with tradition, and leave their perfectly healthy parents, in order to study in the nearby state.

Through Sesame Street I’ve heard of newly arrived Latin families who have extended families like that, whose children never attend preschool because there is always a grandmother available to care for them until they reach kindergarten. Starting school without having had the opportunity of socializing with other kids can put these children from extended families at a distinct disadvantage. 

In all cases, one could make the argument that close families stand in the way of offspring.

So amigas, before you sign onto anyone’s agenda of “family” or “core values,” read the fine print. Don’t be fooled into thinking that life is as easy as decisions between good or bad, or yes or no, or black and white.  The answers lie between those polar extremes. Be critical, and ask these pale, soft, thin-lipped men, who are the proponents of “core values,” to be specific.  

One more thing, and I mean this sincerely, if anyone reading this can tell me exactly what “core values “means (besides, as we’ve been told, believing  in a Christian higher power, and being  against abortion), please let me know.

Sonia Manzano

I decided to wait until my emotions had subsided to write about the wonderful end to this Presidential race in America. But I don’t think my emotions will subside for a while. I even wept two days later while reading Gail Collins in the New York Times – and she was saying something funny!  She said baby boomers (me) should applaud themselves for ceding to a younger generation who never went to Woodstock and were sick of hearing about it!  

I also choked up a bit when I read that Barbara Walters didn’t shed a tear on Tuesday night, but cried on Wednesday morning when she heard a reference to Martin Luther King.  And something caught in my throat while reading that great African-American singer Sarah Vaughn was overcome when visiting the White House because she remembered not being able to get a hotel room in Washington D.C.

I think many people are feeling emotional because this election touches on things past. I wonder if I’m subconsciously remembering the anxiety I used to feel when I was a little girl and watched the Civil Rights movement unfold on television.  I wondered what would’ve happened if I had visited the South with my very light-skinned cousin?  Would we have been separated, I fretted?  Would I have to go to the back of the bus while he sat in the front?

And why didn’t my mother belittle me for staying out in the sun and getting dark?  And why was straight hair pelo bueno?  Why was kinky hair pelo malo? I rebelled in the late 60’s when I went through a dangerous phase of going to beaches in Puerto Rico, slathering myself up with baby oil, and lying out in the noonday sun till I got first-degree burns – my relatives, snug in the shade of palm trees, shaking their heads in disapproval, fearful I’d pass out.  And when I was a hippie, going braless also meant wearing all your hair natural — yes hermanas – on my legs and armpits as well! Ugh! But you get my point.  

Reconciling our racist past with recent events makes us cry. But Thomas Cahill (author of How The Irish Saved Civilization among other things) once said, “We are both the most tolerant and intolerant nation on the planet.” This election makes me see that we’ve tapped into our tolerant side. And as I heard a space alien say in an old movie, “humans are fascinating because they are capable of both the most despicable and most heroic things.”  

This election doesn’t make up for all the despicable things: Jim Crow, the persecution of Native Americans, usurping elected officials in small South American countries when things didn’t go our way.  But it says a whole lot about how grand humans can be. 

A reporter, after seeing a girl weep as she listened to Obama, said it was the “end of the age on cynicism.”  I say good riddance to it; and will share a reference in a Pedro Pietri poem, that I am reminded of: 

…to be called Negrito

Is to be called love…

Sonia Manzano

“You are flagged! Your are eighty-sixed! No more for you!” It was my husband, Richard. “You can have all the mojitos you want but – not one more second of news!  No PBS, no CNN, no MSNBC!  No ABC, no CBS, no NBC!  (He didn’t have to worry about FOX.)  “No newspapers either.  You are getting way too paranoid.  Now – come out from under the bed!”

He was right. I was freaking out. Rachel Maddow’s story of Palin sneering at research using fruit flies put me over top. Why does Palin hate science so much? Then there was that heartbreaking story in the New York Times about one of Florida’s African-American Democrat communities.  They had voted early, only to become paranoid that their votes wouldn’t be counted. Some decided to wait until the 4th, only to worry about bus service mysteriously stopping or electricity in the area cutting out on that day.

Suddenly, the phone rang. “Come out from under the bed, it’s for you!”  yelled Richard.  I was too afraid to come out. I didn’t tell him but, since the Patriot Act, I thought my phone was tapped.  (When forced to answer the phone I spoke in Spanish.  Hmmm.  was that a good thing…or a bad thing?) “Take a message, “I squeaked. “  It was the wardrobe designer from Sesame Street.  “They want you to come in for a fitting.”  A fitting.  I love to go in for fittings.  What’s not to like?  You show up and try on great clothes. No shopping.  And not only that – they tell you which ones look the best. My mind was whirling out of control. I started to think about clothes.   If the Republicans get in, they’ll appoint such right wing Supreme Court Justices, they will not only take away our right to decide what we want to do with our bodies, they’ll tell us how to clothe them!  Before we know it – we’ll be wearing burkhas.  

Do you buy Latina Maria wearing a burkha on Sesame Street?  Next the religious right will want Big Bird and Elmo to wear pants, even though Elmo doesn’t even have a bottom most of the time. 

Fashion magazines will feature black burkhas for the spring season and black burkhas for the fall season. I look terrible with my whole body covered!  (And why is the religious right comfortable with Palin saying she’ll consult God on all social decisions, but so uncomfortable when Middle Eastern people purport the same thing?) “Tell them I’ll call after the election,” I croaked.

My husband hung up saying, “Obama is ahead.  There’s nothing to worry about!”   But why was I so nervous.  Did I really think the Republicans were going to steal the election by (a) rigging voting booths or (b) intentionally wounding Palin’s kid in Iraq so that they’d get the pity vote, or (c) intimidating students at colleges? 

I wouldn’t put anything past a political party that approved torture, behind closed doors.  Then there was my fear of McCain dying of melanoma (32% chance I read somewhere) and having that narrow minded nitwit lead the free world. Was she a Manchurian candidate, set up by the right, as my husband once suggested? 

Suddenly I felt a presence.  It was Richard. “Move over,” he said crawling under the bed, next to me.  “Honey what …”  I shoved my Jimmy Choos aside to give him some room.  “I can’t believe what I just heard,” he said.  Some dope asked Biden if Barack was Marxist. Don’t these anchor people have to get a high school diploma, or at least a GED to get those jobs?”  “I don’t believe it I said.” Richard slowly reached into his pocket. 

Then we awkwardly tried to flip a coin to see which one of us was brave enough to come out from under the bed, and make us some more mojitos.